My Thoughts on How You Can Have a Successful Experience with Calibrated Peer Review by Dr. Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt, CP

1. My Thoughts on How You Can Have a Successful Experience with Calibrated Peer Review by Dr. Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt, CPR Administrator, TAMU

2. WHAT IS CPR™? • A Web-based instructional writing and peer assessing tool • Originated in the Molecular Science Project, an NSF-sponsored chemistry reform project (DUE 95-55605) at UCLA • Enables you to learn by writing about significant topics in a course, then going through a critiquing process 7 times FREE

3. HISTORY AT TAMUcpr.tamu.edu • 2002 - CPRTM was introduced to TAMU by me, Dr. Wendy Keeney-Kennicutt after a Chemical Education workshop demo. • 2003 - To avoid FERPA issues & because of WALS NSF grant thru CTE, CPRTM was housed on a secure TAMU server. • 2003 - I volunteered to be the CPRTM administrator because of experience. WALS = Writing for Assessment and Learning in the Natural and Mathematical Sciences

4. USE OF CPR AT TAMU • In the last 3 years, CPR at TAMU has been used by approximately • 19,000undergraduate and graduate students doing • 492 new assignments by • 384 instructors in • 400 courses spread over • 30+ majors in • 9 colleges. 

5. Accounting Ag. Economics Animal Science Anthropology Archeology Biochemistry Biology Botany Bus. Admin. Ctr. Acad. Enh. Chemistry English Ed. Curriculum Ed. Psychology Engineering Film French German Geography Kinesiology Learn. Comm. Math MAJORS USING CPRTM • Microbiology • Nutrition • Physics • Poultry Science • Psychology • Reading • Secondary Ed. • Vet Integr. Bio. Sci. • Wildlife & Fish. Sci. • Zoology

6. Why are you doing CPR? • Giving you more practice writing in your classes – not just English papers • You will have to write after university in the real world • Ramifications of Bloom’s Taxonomy pyramid (next slide) • What level will pay you the “Big Bucks”? • How will you get experience at working at higher levels of understanding (analysis, synthesis and evaluation)?

7. Why is writing important? Evaluation Judgment: the ability to make decisions and support views; requires understanding of values Combination of information to form a unique product; requires creativity and originality Synthesis Identification of component parts; determination of arrangement, logic, semantics Analysis Use of information to solve problems; transfer of abstract or theoretical ideas to practical situations. Application Identification of connections and relationships Interpretation Restatement in your own words; paraphrase; summary Translation Verbatim information; memorization with no evidence of understanding Recall Bloom’s Taxonomy – categorizing level of abstraction of questions

8. HOW DOES IT WORK? • You write an assignment as per instructions. • You pass a calibration step, where you learn to recognize and rank 3 essays of different quality on the same topic. • You, NOT the instructor, critique 3 of your peers and your own work on-line. • Your instructor can change grade afterwards.

9. INTRO • A CPR assignment consists of three stages:     Stage 1: Text Entry StageStage 2: Calibration and Review StageStage 3: Results Stage • Only one stage can be accessed at any time. • If you don’t do the text entry, you cannot do the rest of the assignment.

10. STAGE 1: TEXT ENTRY • You will explore the assignment source material. • The source material provides the information about the assignment topic. Source material can include: web sites, articles, text books, pictures, movies, animations, etc.

11. STAGE 1: TEXT ENTRY(continued) • You then submit a text based on the material and guiding questions. Use HTML (see Student FAQs and instructor notes). • Make sure you answer all the guiding questions in your essay. Read the Writing Prompt carefully – it sets the scene. • Write in MSWord, then copy/paste into text box. CPR will time you out after about 10 minutes and you can lose all your work. You can also check your grammar/spelling.

12. STAGE 2:Calibration and Review Stage You will: • evaluate three example texts, called calibration essays using a grading rubric. These calibrations will develop your ability to effectively review the work of your peers. You have 2 chances to pass each calibration. • evaluate the work of three peers anonymously. Take some time & be fair in your written comments. • evaluate your own work.

13. Stage 3: Results Stage • You will view your assignment results. For Your Instructor: • A problems list is generated • All data can be downloaded. • Times can be altered for specific students that miss deadlines, so tell your instructor right away if you miss a deadline.

14. CPR OVERVIEW • CPR deals with both writing and critiquing and usually critiquing is worth more. • CPR gives you practice in evaluating other people’s work (this may make you nervous). This is a very powerful skill! • We know you are novice reviewers, but the only way you will get any better is to practice! • There is a safety net – your instructor – who will regrade your work if you think your peers graded you badly. Every instructor will handle this differently, but it will get handled.

15. More Words of Advice • The Writing Center (2nd floor of Library) will be happy to look over your writing and make comments before the due date. • Always preview your writing before you submit to be sure it looks OK. You can submit as often as you like until the deadline. Beware of the 10min timeout. • HTML coding is easy – put <P>at the end of a line to start a new paragraph, etc. See student FAQs • If you forget your login information, email me: kennicutt@mail.chem.tamu.edu.

16. FINALLY: Let me show you how to log in……. http://cpr.tamu.edu Then GOOD LUCK!